Sunday, January 5, 2014

When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, known pejoratively to critics as "Obamacare," our Mainstream Media have, again and again, generally failed to tell the whole story. The reports have mostly focused on the early failures of the federal website, admittedly a debacle at first.

But there are other sides to this story that are rarely being told. One rare case was a recent lead story in the middle-market daily newspaper of Wichita Falls, Texas -- I believe it is called the Record-News, owned by the Scripps chain.

The report tells the story of Julie Coley of Wichita Falls, who signed up for "Obamacare" pretty much as a matter of necessity. Before, Julie and her husband, Jeff, could only get health insurance through the Texas High-Risk Pool. Their monthly premium was a ridiculous $839, with a yearly deductible of $7,500, which they could never meet. Why? Because Jeff Coley had pre-existing conditions such as congestive heart failure.

After obtaining a policy through the Affordable Care Act, Jeff and Julie now pay $349 a month, with an annual deductible of $1,500. She estimates that they save $600 a month after reductions in prescription drug costs are included in their medical budget. The couple are also now able to get preventive screening and diagnostic tests that they couldn't get through their old plan.

The Coleys are exactly the kinds of people that "Obamacare" is intended to help, and they are seeing the benefits come very quickly. But judging from the kind of coverage the MSM have usually been giving the "Obamacare" rollout, one wouldn't be able to tell that there are millions upon millions of Americans who have been facing the same predicaments as the Coleys.

Instead, the MSM have aped the rhetoric of the right wing, stressing the fiasco that was the botched IT when the federal website made its debut Oct. 1. Let's not kid ourselves -- the Republicans and those who sympathize with them want this broadened coverage to fail, and they don't make a secret of it. They really aren't interested in saving the lives of sick people -- they seem to want them to just die off, if that's what it takes to get their party back into power. The MSM, so often alleged to be "liberal," are blatantly playing along.

"THEY LIED," screams the cover of the ironically named "Reason" magazine, a libertarian mouthpiece. Shown with that is a picture of President Obama and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

I didn't read their cover article -- I've got to watch my blood pressure -- but I presume that what Obama and Pelosi were supposed to have lied about was that anybody who liked their health insurance policy as it was would be permitted to keep it.

Conveniently ignoring most of the facts

What is conveniently ignored, over and over, is that these policies that the insurance thieves have been canceling are generally cheap "junk" plans that have proved a gold mine for litigation lawyers across the country. The deductibles are ridiculously high, and they don't cover important points such as hospitalization and diagnostics. What is also conveniently ignored is that up to now the uninsured and underinsured have generally gone to charity hospitals and emergency rooms for late-stage treatment, which makes not only healthy people's insurance premiums and hospital bills go up, but their property taxes as well.

None of this should be shocking. For decades U.S. media consumers have been subjected to business coverage that is unabashedly biased in favor of wealthy people, the investment class, society's material "winners." Labor is given little voice, and working-class people are generally depicted as lazy spendthrifts who simply don't understand the struggles of multimillionaires to meet payrolls every couple of weeks. And now that Congress has failed to vote on extending benefits to millions of long-term jobless people, many more Americans face the precipice of homelessness as the U.S. "safety net" is relentlessly slashed again and again. Oh, and such people get sick, too.

I have no illusions about "Obamacare" being a very half-assed solution to a much bigger problem. Even with the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans will still not be able to get health insurance. Ultimately, the only solution will be a single-payer system, or Medicare-E (Medicare for everybody). Despite the shrill rhetoric one mostly hears nowadays, this problem isn't going to go away, and hence I would dare to predict that the U.S. will see single-payer fairly soon, perhaps within a decade.

But this will be no thanks to the MSM. Our allegedly "liberal" Mainstream Media outlets might as well be owned by the Republican Party, judging from the coverage they've given to this story. To slightly alter a phrase one used to see on bumper stickers displayed by right-wingers -- I don't believe the neoliberal media.

Separated at birth ...

Followers

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Obama's Secret Army?

I fear that some right-wing rubber-room refugees may think I'm serious.

Inside Sarah Palin's Church?

No, not really. This was somewhere in Tennessee. But she used to belong to a Pentecostal church that, among other things, buys into speaking in unknown tongues and faith healing. And then, there's this thing about handling venomous serpents ...

Post of May 18, 2009

"I consider myself a reasonably tough person. But if you waterboarded me enough times, I would probably sign my house and car over to you and confess to the murders of Jonbenet Ramsey and the Lindbergh baby." -- MJ

About Me

As all my posts state, I am an underground writer living in Texas. I am doing political blogging under a nom de plume for various reasons. I was born in 1956 in a small Texas town; I now live in a medium-large city. I have been writing my entire adult life, and have been published, both mainstream and underground. In my teens I was actually a libertarian-type conservative. Meeting Young Republican types in college was crucial to my being cured of that once and for all. At one point in my 20s I was something of a Trotskyite, but eventually became a more moderate progressive.
Since I started this blog and affiliated with other blogs, my writing has appeared in the USA Today, CNN and Reuters online editions, in Buzzflash.com, Crooks and Liars, and a number of other popular sites. My invaluable mentors have been Marc McDonald at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, and Blue Girl of They Gave Us a Republic and other fine blogs.
In keeping with anonymity, this is all I should say.

See "Manifesto Joe's Great Moments in Conservative History, Chapter 1"

Favorite progressive movies

Mister Roberts -- see January 2009 post.

The Big Parade, The Crowd, Our Daily Bread, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seven Days in May, Dr. Strangelove, The Grapes of Wrath, Silkwood, Salt of the Earth, Born on the Fourth of July, A Face in the Crowd, The Manchurian Candidate, Easy Rider, Chinatown, Reds, The Naked and the Dead.

Fear on Trial.

Open City, Seven Beauties, Swept Away, The Bicycle Thief, Grand Illusion, Fury, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremburg, Pressure Point, The President's Analyst, From Here to Eternity, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Milagro Beanfield War, Native Son, Bob Roberts, There Will Be Blood.

Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Hombre, Cool Hand Luke, Pan's Labyrinth, Network, Cutter's Way, All Quiet on the Western Front, Twelve Angry Men, Matewan, Return of the Seacaucus Seven, American History X, Putney Swope, The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, Norma Rae, North Country.